← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · JoseyWales
Thread ID: 16993 | Posts: 13 | Started: 2005-02-27
2005-02-27 03:24 | User Profile
I didnt know this, but i was just browsing some wwii documentery websites, and it gave a timeline of events. why did churchill lose ?
2005-02-27 04:32 | User Profile
The word is [COLOR=DarkRed][B]LOSE[/B][/COLOR] [U][I]not[/I][/U] LOOSE!! Gawd, it pisses me off when I see that!
2005-02-27 04:45 | User Profile
ok, now that ive corrected that typing mistake, can you enlighten me on this subject that im obviously lacking ?
2005-02-27 04:50 | User Profile
JoseyWales,
I too have always wondered that too. The marxist said they would bring peace and wealth for all. And the people voted them in is all I can think of. Churchill destroyed Europe and England too. A sad event...
2005-02-27 04:58 | User Profile
Churchill lost the 1945 general election because he was insufficiently supportive of the consensus in Britain that had grown up around the welfare state and the National Health Service (NHS). By 1945, the British had had enough of war and the nanny state was seen as their reward. Churchill just didn't take it seriously enough. :thumbsup:
2005-02-27 05:51 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Faust]JoseyWales,
I too have always wondered that too. The marxist said they would bring peace and wealth for all. And the people voted them in is all I can think of. Churchill destroyed Europe and England too. A sad event...[/QUOTE]Well, basically didn't he lose because the other side got more votes than he did?
But seriously, the left won in Britain for pretty much the same reasons the left won most elections across Europe in the immediate post war era. That is because the right had divided itself, obviously. The reasons for we still debate. Nazi sympathizers like Franco say we were too hostile to Hitler, mainstream opinion says we were too friendly.
Oddly, just like the situation today.
2005-02-27 06:03 | User Profile
I wouldn't give Churchill's defeat in 1945 too much significance, after all he was reelected as Prime Minister several years later.
2005-02-27 19:47 | User Profile
Well, the war simply postponed the growing electoral power of the Labour Party.
Once war with Germany was over, a general election could not be postponed any longer, and Churchill's number was up.
If Churchill was serious about saving the British Empire and staving off Socialism, he should not have pushed for war with Germany, or kept the war going in 1940. Once Britain was bankrupt and people were sick of the old order, the social welfare state and Imperial collapse were inevitable.
Churchill was as much a puppet as any politician though, so we shouldn't feel sorry for "Winny the Gasser" losing an election. He was a bought and paid for Inner Party servant ever since he went bankrupt in 1929. After that, he did the bidding of those who paid his bills.
2005-03-04 05:04 | User Profile
During the war, the people of the United Kingdom suffered a great deal, not as much as those on the continent, but still a great deal. There were a lot of bombing deaths, war casulties and heavy rationing. The common people were hoping that a change of government would bring greater prosperity and the like.
Actually, the Labour government made things worse. Long after the German economy started humming along, the Brits were still rationing bread and meat in the early fifties.
2005-03-06 06:15 | User Profile
"A Britain Fit For Heroes" was Labour's winning slogan in that election--Churchill had called for blood; sweat; toil & tears during the War but the British people were exhausted by 1945--and no longer in a sacrificing mood.
2005-03-06 20:44 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Howard Campbell, Jr.]"A Britain Fit For Heroes" was Labour's winning slogan in that election--Churchill had called for blood; sweat; toil & tears during the War but the British people were exhausted by 1945--and no longer in a sacrificing mood.[/QUOTE]Well Americans were hardly in more of a sacrificing mood. It was the Americans after all who chose to bring their troops home from Europe right away, and otherwise pushed for a quick end to "the war/sacrifice mentality".
Going back to the original question though, American public opinion was and really always have been pretty perplexed by the British throwing out "their great war leader" right after the victory had been won. To us it seemed like the supreme ingratitude. Throwing out the elequent and articulate Churchill for the party of colorless socialists like Atlee and MacDonald.
But I think Churchill and the Conservatives were viewed differently in Britain, where I think the electorate has longer memories. In America Conservatives were viewed as the party which won the war under Churchill, in Britain they were viewed as the party which got them into the war in the first place, although, they bit their lips, or at least kept the upper one stiff, and fought the war stoically.
Really I think no one like war more than us good ole Americans. :cowboy: Elsewhere they hold people accountable for their mistakes.
2005-03-06 21:41 | User Profile
A factor which Orwell mentions in his mid 1940's essays was also at work here--service in the British military was an intense microcosm of the English class system...most enlisted men associated the Tory party with the stupid, snobbish and arrogant officers they'd endured for years.
Voting Labour was an act of defiance for many of those veterans and their families.
The American military was/is far more egalitarian and generated far less class resentment.
2005-03-06 23:22 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Howard Campbell, Jr.]A factor which Orwell mentions in his mid 1940's essays was also at work here--service in the British military was an intense microcosm of the English class system...most enlisted men associated the Tory party with the stupid, snobbish and arrogant officers they'd endured for years.
Voting Labour was an act of defiance for many of those veterans and their families. True enough. That is why the Brits drifted left after both World Wars, the first and second.
The Brits, unlike the French say, were very stoic. They would lose 20,000 dead in one day for instance at the Somme marching forward in rigid parade formation, almost like Picket at Gettysburg, only against machine guns, without rebelling, out of duty and loyalty. But they remembered.
The American military was/is far more egalitarian and generated far less class resentment.[/QUOTE]Well, the U.S. military has other faults.
The Germans were the only people to take army leadership and morale seriously, which is why their army was always a source of social stability the nation could generally look to in crisis.